Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universität zu Köln, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction -- Colonizing the Realm of Words: Literature and Colonialism -- Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India -- How to Ignore a Century of Literary Production -- A Century of Cultural Change -- In Search of a Lost Literature: The Chapters of This Book -- 2. Mapping the Universe of the Pulavar: Ti. Minatcicuntaram Pillai (1815-1876) and the Field of Traditional Literary Practices -- Pulavar Education and Pre-Modern Tamil Poetics -- The Pulavars' Genres: Pirapantam Works and Temple Myths (talapuranam) -- Scholarship in the Name of the Lord: Monasteries as Patrons -- When One's Fame Rises to the Heavens: The Pulavars' Economy of Praise -- "Addressing the Assembly of Poets" (avaiyatakkam) -- The Public Premiere (arankerram) -- Occasional Poems (tanippatal) and Epistolary Poems (cittukkavi) -- The Spoken and the Written Word: Composition, Performance, and Transmission -- Of Gods and Kings: Themes and Contents of Pulavar Literature -- The Uses of Akam Poetics in the Nineteenth Century: The Kulatturkkovai (1853) -- Makavittuvan Ti. Minatcicuntaram Pillai: A Poets' Poet -- 3. Pulavars and Potentates: Structures of Literary Patronage at the Zamindars' Courts and Beyond -- Literature and Rituals of Courtly Representation -- The System of Literary Patronage at the Zamindars' Courts -- A "Who Is Who" of Nineteenth-Century Royal Patrons and Their Poets -- Thanjavur -- Pudukkottai -- Ramnad and Sivagangai -- Smaller Zamindaris -- Of Beauty and Benevolence: Themes of Courtly Literature -- Kama's Arrows Whizzing Past the King: Royal Panegyrics and Eroticism in the Cetupati viralivitututu -- The Pulavar in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Changes in Patronage -- 4. Toward the Modern Tamil Author: The Colonial Critique of the "Vernacular" and Mayuram Vetanayakam Pillai (1826-1889) as an Agent of Change -- Mayuram Vetanayakam Pillai: A Biographical Reconstruction -- Writing for "the moral improvement of the Natives of India": The Nitinul (1859) -- Law, Women's Education and Devotional Poetry: Vetanayakam Pillai's Other Writings -- 5. The Emergence of the Tamil Novel -- The History of Prathapa Mudaliar (1879): An "approximation to a novel"? -- The History of Suguna Sundari (1887): A "longwinded moral tale, weary and unprofitable"? -- The Fatal Rumor or The History of Kamalambal (1893-1895): "Vedanta through fiction"? -- Further Comparisons -- 6. Epilogue -- 1. The Dating of the Cetupati viralivitututu Revisited -- 2. Chronological Table of the Earliest Tamil Novels Published Before 1900 -- 3. Original Tamil Texts Quoted and Annotations.